Hacker News Reader

Comment by fargle | Hacker News Reader

agree. i can tell it was a bad day for the author and it sucks. but it's irritating to sit there and blame the exact system and company that gave him the exceptional job and pay in the first place.

everyone who works in FAANG, if you are drawing an enormous salary and bonus, compared to the average guy, i hope you realize the how fortunate you are. i hope you are putting away, saving, investing, at least 1/3 or 1/2 of it. when and if this happens after a few years, unlike the average guy, you can simply choose to retire or take some time off and travel rather than the normal option of loosing your home and being completely ruined.

View on HN

some of us are on work visas, so "take some time off" would also mean "wind up your current life and leave the country"

>"wind up your current life and leave the country"

Isn't that what so many people do in their own country in order to come to the US on a work visa to begin with?

yes, and trust me, it makes a big difference when it's voluntary and you are in full control the time frame.

while i'm sympathetic, it still means you had a great deal going. if/when it ends you shouldn't get pissed off you got the opportunity in the first place - a visa isn't permanent.

to be clear - what i was reacting to was the author's idea that he should reject capitalism and/or start a trade union, after having been a very, very, lucky player of the capitalism game indeed. it pisses me off when people making N multiples of 6 figure incomes start forgetting how lucky they are and how much they personally benefited from that exact system. a laid off googler's worst day is many, many times better than the average guys daily life. in this country, let alone somewhere else.

A visa is not permanent, but it might as well be for Indian and Chinese citizens. The green card lottery can easily take decades. You could have gone to college, got married, had kids, bought a house, and maybe even see your kids graduate college and have kids of their own before you get guaranteed residency in the US.

"Oh you should be happy you had a good thing going" is not something I'd find especially comforting if I was told I needed to rapidly uproot my entire life and leave a country I've spent decades in.

thanks, glad someone understands! (i'm indian and stuck in just that situation)

I have a bunch of open Python roles. Like, a could-hire-your-entire-team bunch. Which doesn't mean I can afford you! But happy to chat and see what's possible.

If you're physically within the U.S. (just a location, not a citizenship/green card restriction) feel free to reach out, contact info is in my profile.

> got married, had kids, bought a house

I lived in the US on a temporary visa and it's wild to me that people would put down roots in any country without a clear path to permanent residency.

When you read the conditions attached to your employer-sponsored non-immigrant visa it makes it pretty clear that you're not in the country to settle permanently, you're there to work for the duration of your visa and that's all.

Some people seem to ignore that and just trust that neither their employer nor the US government will screw them over.

A good friend of mine is Indian and also gay. Moving back to India and having a happy life with equal rights isn't on the table.

Sorry to hear that.

There are lots of countries in the world that welcome gay people and have simpler, saner, and more predictable pathways to permanent residency than the USA.

And then we are back to "just leave your friends, family, and life."

This person moved to the US for undergrad, attended grad school, and has been working in the US for like a decade. That's 20 years here. Even if they were only here on H1b for two years, simply moving somewhere else would still be leaving the country they lived in for 12 years. You can surely understand why somebody would be motivated not to do this.

People who work at Google are indeed very fortunate. We are paid large sums of money. I feel like I've found a pot of gold and give significant portions of my income away to the less fortunate directly because I feel that so much of my pay is based on luck.

However, Google employees only capture a fraction of Google's profits. Google made twenty five billion dollars in profit in Q1. Annualized that is 100b. Google has 180,000 employees. That is 555,555 in profit per employee. If Google was really existing in service of its employees rather than its investors, as it would be in a socialist system, then I'd expect my pay to rise dramatically.

>If Google was really existing in service of its employees rather than its investors

But then it wouldn't make that kind of profit.

Why wouldn't it?

> If Google was really existing in service of its employees rather than its investors, as it would be in a socialist system

What socialist system is that where a company is run from the benefit of its employees?

No, you'd have to take all the profit of all the companies in the country and divide that by the number of citizens. That would be true socialism. Like a kibbutz in Israel. IMO it is as much utopia as 100% free market capitalism. Almost everywhere you have something in between, including in the US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com